Module 1.5 Play-based learning and general capabilities

Play-based and inquiry learning provides a way for students to practice, re-enact, and master a range of emotional ideas, feelings and experiences.  

For example, when students take on the role of someone else in pretend play, they explore a range of emotions that support their capacities for empathy, abstract levels of thought and reflection, and prepare them emotionally and intellectually for the future (Wieder, 2017). Students also develop metacognitive and self-regulatory skills that are important for higher-order thinking, creativity, planning and evaluating learning, and problem-solving (Whitebread, Coltman, Jameson & Lander, 2009).  

In all types of play and inquiry experiences, students are involved in collaboration with peers which facilitates friendships, promotes pro-social behaviours and attitudes, and fosters the experience of responding to peer suggestions and resolving conflict (Scott & Panksepp, 2013). 

To support students' exploration and application of social and emotional capabilities in play-based and inquiry learning experiences, teachers can:  

• provide an environment that promotes student collaboration
• guide students to initiate interactions and solve conflicts through open questioning, modelling and direct interactions
• provide students with sufficient time to engage in play-based and inquiry learning.

Many of these capabilities align with student's Personal and Social Capability outcomes in the Victorian Curriculum.

A strong relationship exists between play-based and inquiry learning, and language and literacy development. For example, in pretend play and constructive play, students will form imaginary stories that support the development of narrative skills including story comprehension and story production. They will also develop the ability to symbolise and use an object as something else, which has been found to be a predictor of a student's expressive and receptive language ability (Stagnitti, Paatsch, Nolan & Campbell, 2020).

In all types of play and inquiry experiences students engage in greater social and linguistic interaction to collaborate with peers. In particular, the development of narrative in pretend play supports the emergence of early multi-word speech, more complex grammatical speech and greater growth in linguistic knowledge during the first year of school, when compared to learning through direct, didactic instruction (Stagnitti et al. 2016; Fekonja et al. 2005).

To support students' exploration and application of literacy and language in play-based and inquiry learning experiences, teachers can:

• Use meaningful and planned interactions to guide students towards emergent reading and writing skills such as understanding the function and form of print and the relationship between oral and written language, recognising words as discrete elements, and showing an understanding of phonological structure  (Justice & Pullen, 2003; Sliogeris & Almeida, 2017).
• Provide a literacy rich environment that prompts students to explore and engage with literacy knowledge. For example, students can be guided to write shopping lists, write signs, document their stories, record their planning and report their findings. These artefacts can all be used as assessable documents of student learning. 
• Encourage students to investigate a concept further through multimodal resources.

For support in selecting high impact teaching practices that improve outcomes in reading, writing and speaking and listening, please explore the Literacy Toolkit. 

In play-based and inquiry learning experiences students explore and apply many areas of mathematical knowledge. Common examples include subtraction, counting, addition, one-to-one correspondence, representing number via written and spoken signs and symbols, and understanding of money (Emfinger, 2009).  

Further, interactions between students in play-based and inquiry learning experiences will often support students' mathematical language (e.g., large and small, big and little, more and less), logical reasoning, shape and space, pattern and order, and counting (Reikeras, 2020).  

To support students' exploration and application of mathematical knowledge in play-based and inquiry learning experiences, teachers can:  

• Provide a mathematically rich environment to prompt students to explore and apply mathematical knowledge in their play (Worthington & van Oers, 2016). For example, if setting up a shop, students may be provided with money and a cash register.
• Guide students to document their mathematical planning and/or findings in a book or worksheet.
• Use planned and meaningful interactions to guide students towards mathematical knowledge. Open-ended questions, challenges and prompts can be directly related to mathematics to encourage students to count, compare amounts, determine how many, and identify and write numerals (Trawick-Smith et al., 2016).

For support in selecting high impact teaching practices that improve outcomes in mathematical knowledge, please explore Numeracy for all Learners.

Play-based and inquiry learning is advocated to best foster science and technology education and to support students to develop interest in the world around them (Campbell, Jobling and Howitt, 2021; Sliogeris & Almeida, 2017).

Outdoor play in particular, engages students with the knowledge of the world around them, allowing them to observe and explore changes, patterns and properties of objects.

To support students' exploration and application of scientific and STEM knowledge in play-based and inquiry learning experiences, teachers can:

• Provide opportunities in the environment to engage with digital technologies in new and dynamic ways that support multi-modal learning, meaning making and representative thinking (Yelland, 2020).
• Provide opportunities to explore a concept they are enquiring about through pretend play. For example, if students are inquiring about the topic of insects, animals or plants then provide them with toys and materials that will prompt them to further explore this knowledge in an imaginary context (insect or animal figurines, sticks and loose parts). 
  
• Provide opportunities for students inquire by offering tools for investigation. For example: magnifying glasses, books, iPads with Youtube or encyclopedia applications set up (Sliogeris & Almeida, 2017) .
• Prompt students to document their findings and share with the class.

Many of these knowledge and skills align with student's outcomes in the science and technologies learning areas in the Victorian Curriculum.

Such play-based and inquiry approaches are not merely 'free' play without guidance but rather position play as integrated within the curriculum, where teachers facilitate and extend student's learning and general capabilities.